Re: Question on a copyright
warp@whitestar.soark.net <warp@whitestar.soark.net> wrote:
> > 5. When this software or any work derived from this software is used
> > in a commercial product or bundled with a commercial product,
> > the vendor must also produce the program this software is derived
> > from for either the Linux or FreeBSD operating systems. The Linux
> > or FreeBSD version of the product must be sold for substantially
> > the same amount of money as the product for other platforms,
> > and the Linux or FreeBSD releases must be kept up to date with
> > the releases for other platforms.
> This one bothers me, it may fail section 6 of the DFSG, but I'm really
> not sure, I've not seen one quite like this..
I'm also not sure this meets the authors intent.
It looks like the author was saying that, if you use the program in
a commercial app, that you also port it to linux and freebsd. What it
actually says is that if you use the program in a commercial app that you
also distribute the unmodified original for linux and freebsd, with some
kind of requirement for keeping it in sync with copies of the original
on other platforms.
[Which is why I'm guessing about what the author really meant -- those
kind of restrictions don't make sense unless the author was trying to
force porting the thing to linux or freebsd.]
My call on this is that if the author's intent is the way I think it is
that this is nonfree. If it's not it's still a poorly written copyright.
In either case our obligation is to talk to the author and sort things
out before we distribute this.
[Er.. should this really be going to debian-policy? I've set
the reply-to to point at debian-devel.]
--
Raul
Reply to: